9/08/2013

Several key points here. 1) The Obama administration greatly expanded the intrusiveness of these searches from what the Bush administration was willing to allow. 2) The Obama administration is searching through (in other words reading and listening to) the "vast majority" of the emails and telephone records of Americans. 3) That the Obama administration can do this without warrants. Where does this leave Obama's claim that he is not doing any spying on Americans? From the Washington Post:

What had not been previously acknowledged is that the court in 2008 imposed an explicit ban — at the government’s request — on those kinds of searches, that officials in 2011 got the court to lift the bar and that the search authority has been used.

Together the permission to search and to keep data longer expanded the NSA’s authority in significant ways without public debate or any specific authority from Congress. The administration’s assurances rely on legalistic definitions of the term “target” that can be at odds with ordinary English usage. The enlarged authority is part of a fundamental shift in the government’s approach to surveillance: collecting first, and protecting Americans’ privacy later.

“The government says, ‘We’re not targeting U.S. persons,’ ” said Gregory T. Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. “But then they never say, ‘We turn around and deliberately search for Americans’ records in what we took from the wire.’ That, to me, is not so different from targeting Americans at the outset.”

The court decision allowed the NSA “to query the vast majority” of its e-mail and phone call databases using the e-mail addresses and phone numbers of Americans and legal residents without a warrant . . . .

1 Comments:

A fairly reliable rule of thumb is to assume any communication from the Obama administration is a lie until proven otherwise from another source. Any of you old guys remember what it was like under Truman or Ike or Kennedy? They may not have always told the complete truth but you couldn't go too far wrong in believing them most of the time. It was a pretty damn good feeling having the President ACTUALLY "having your back". How the hell did we get criminals heading up our government?